Ponderings on Community & Peace

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Monthly Archives: February 2011

Jesus, keep us from the tragedy of blaspheming your name because we have succumbed to a watered-down faith. Make our spirits restless whenever we think that the way things are is the way things have to be. Amen.

For we know that by faith that the way things are, is not the way that things have to be. But I ask you, what will you do about it.

Hebrews 10:32-39 (19-39)

But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For,

“Yet a little while,

and the coming one will come and will not delay;

but my righteous one shall live by faith,

and if he shrinks back,

my soul has no pleasure in him.”

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

If we believe that God is who He says He is, than don’t we need to be doing what He has called us to do.

Our faith has been watered down in so many ways, through out the years. We have so many denominations, so many different labels, seeker, evangelical, missional, social gospel, etc… It is really no wonder that people don’t know what to believe, where to go, who will really help them.

In our own ways, we have worked to compete for winning lost souls, falling into the way the world does things, we have in a lot of ways become indistinguishable from the world. It shouldn’t be about who has the best plan, should it. I thought we were all supposed to be working from the same blueprint.

Why then are things the way that they are?

As people of faith don’t we believe that the way things are is not the way things have to be.

I love The Sermon on the Mount, in it Jesus teaches us what being followers/disciples is supposed to look like, I believe that in a lot of ways that the problem that we have in the church today can be traced back to the ignoring of this great teaching of Jesus as a whole. Sure we have used it in bits and pieces, but in doing so we have missed the main point as a whole.

Matthew 28:19-20

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

This piece, I am sure to some will seem incomplete or inadequate, but than again, so is the the work of the Church, let us strive together in this work until its time of completion, and it will be in that striving together that its inadequacies can and will be overcome.

One last thought: We tend to focus a lot on justice today and very little on grace.

Throughout the gospels we are repeatedly told that after some word or deed of Jesus “his disciples believed in him.” The point of this statement is not that up to that point they had no faith, but rather that their faith deepened with the passage of time. To believe in God is more than simply to profess God’s existence; it is to enter into communion with God and — the two being inseparable — with our fellow human beings as well. All this adds up to a process. – Gustavo Gutierrez, from his book We Drink from Our Own Wells – excerpt from Sojourners, Verse and Voice – 1/13/10

Received this on the heels of reading John 2:1-11, as part of my sermon prep for this week. This is verse 11 in that passage: “This is the first of the signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.”

I don’t know where I was going to go with this, but the thought of it, I felt I needed to be put out there for others to see and maybe reflect on as well.

Was it a sign or miracle that caused you to believe at first?

If so, have you moved beyond that and entered into an ever deepening relationship with God?

If I believe in God,then don’t I have to believe in other people as well? That is, don’t I need to love them like God does? So that through that love, they too may come to believe also.

Is love God and love others, synonomous with; believe in God and believe in others?

If by believing in people, we give them hope, so that they can start believing in themselves, and that by believing in themselves they start believing in God, then they can start believing in people and giving them hope and so on …

If you think you might see where I’m going with this; then please comment on it,so that we can get a conversation going and maybe we can clear it up for both us and others.

Pondering …

Original post on Facebook Note on Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 2:57pm